In general, I'm not a fan of meetings. I find that they tend to waste a lot of time and unless they're very carefully co-ordinated, such as the daily meetings in SCRUM, they often over-run, go off-topic and achieve very little. In general, I'd prefer to have a conference on IRC, XMPP, Skype or similar – at least then the note-taking is done for you and these methods have an immediacy that e-mail discussions lack.

One area where meetings can be useful, however, is in countering feelings of isolation. Working from home, some people begin to develop a sense of detachment and lose focus. It's not a feeling I'm familiar with personally, I have my targets and I work towards them, although I admit to having felt somewhat apathetic at times when I can see an immediate need for something but haven't been given the support. Getting people together can be a good thing in these situations. Friday was one such occasion.

I left my house at 9am and took a late train down to our head office in London to meet Gavin and the team and talk about our requirements for moving things forward. Moving things forward in this case means getting up-to-date with all the upgrades, patches, fixes and improvements that have been on the ever-growing task list over the last 18 months or so, but have been put off time after time because we've been too busy firefighting something more urgent. We were asked to come up with a list of "must-haves" and "nice-to-haves" for getting things into a reasonable state.

Essentially, the must-haves boiled down to a couple of extra staff, namely an Oracle DBA and a UNIX/Linux Systems Administrator. We have so many little projects started but not finished, because the people who started them either left or got pulled away to work on something more urgent, we just need a couple of people to come in and help us out with the day-to-day stuff. This is stuff that any organisation such as our own would have to deal with, so no prior knowledge of our setup would be required. Admittedly, some of our systems are poorly documented, but the new staff could help out in that department too by documenting things that aren't already. We have a wiki (we have two actually – that's one project that got dropped part way through) and stop-gap documentation can be drafted there before being formalised.

With these staff handling the day-to-day running of things, those with in-depth knowledge of our setup, SLAs, customers and services would be free to finish off some of the projects we've started. With that done, the new staff, specialists in areas we're currently familiar with but not experts in, would offer their expert advice on how to improve our architecture, software installations and so on.

We put this argument to Gavin and were buoyed by the response. I appreciated his no-bullshit style and openness. He told us it was pointless at the moment asking him for a couple of hundred grand in a one-off payment for something because it just wasn't going to get past the board. But new staff – £30k-£40k each over a year – was possible, because it's a long-term investment. He told us that he likes to understand things, so he would undoubtedly ask stupid questions in order to better understand things. He listened to what we had to say, discussed it with us and suggested a few options. He sat and listened intently as we described our infrastructure and applications, what they all do and why it's set up the way it is. He asked questions about how it would fit into a few ideas he has and discussed possible implementations. Above all, he showed a genuine interest.

Even the mood in the office was markedly different from previous times. There was a relaxed atmosphere, a little banter, co-operation and, for want of a better word, togetherness. We sat in the meeting room and ate birthday cake together. As a team. And when we left the meeting, with a task to produce a roadmap for the few months between now and the Christmas party (yes, apparently there will be a Christmas party) we were all positively excited at the prospect of actually making some serious progress and realising some of our potential after being left too long to stagnate and merely survive.

So, if you're an Oracle DBA or a UNIX/Linux Systems Administrator and want to work for a lively, progressive company on exciting projects relating to mobile phones and gaming, why not drop us your CV? Hey, even the meetings are worthwhile!